So Long And Thanks For All The Fish!

Day 1,150, 15:45 • Published in USA USA • by SamWystan
Screw It

I had a revelation last night.

eRepublik is a bad game. And I don't want to play it anymore. Why? Well, there's myriad reasons. Perhaps the worst is that much of the actual "play" (and I use that term loosely) of the game goes on off-site. This isn't only bad from a gameplay point of view, it's bad from a business revenue model. If eRep wanted to leverage itself by selling external ad space, it probably wouldn't be worth much. Those of us who are involved in the outside stuff (the forums, IRC, Google Docs); we refer to the others as "two-clickers". They see what, a maximum of 8 pages per day? Except when you look at the game, there isn't much more to do. Eat. Train. Fight. Run for office on the 5th, 15th, and 25th of each month. Talk about crappy rewards. Write a paper, occasionally, where you're most likely to be ignored, and the only benefits are that if enough people pay attention to you after a very long time, you'll get a chance for some gold. Invite other people to the game. How transparent is that? People shouldn't be pushed to invite people as part of the game, they should be rewarded for doing so because they actually want to, not because there is a reward to it.

eRep bills itself as a "social strategy game". Except Risk is more social. And Risk is a much tighter game. First, once I have done the initial set-up, I never need to do more work to play the game. I can add or remove pieces, but there's really nothing else. Imagine how painfully boring Risk would be if before I made a move, I had to go off to another room to consult with people on whether I should make that move. Or before I could place pieces on the board, I had to fill out a request form for that? Risk would cease to be fun, it would become work. It would become bureaucratic. It, like eRep, would also take forever to see any sort of tangible results.

Max Weber, a German sociologist, discusses the alienating effect that bureaucracy has on people. The worst part about the eRep bureaucracy (which certainly alienates people) is that it's player-created. You want to talk about bad game designers, the outside stuff wasn't even created by the Admins. At least they were smart enough to stop making people do paperwork after the initial registration screen (captchas notwithstanding). The players here work together with the Admins to create a synergy of bad gaming.

I ran into an interesting brick wall the other night. Some of you might have noticed that I was running for Libertarian Party President. And CRoy finally decided to talk to me about it. "This isn't how we do things," he says to me. "We've decided that Iasov will run unopposed," says Claire in a message to me. Or maybe I'm conflating the two. "We". It sounds like the party held a meeting and determined this. And it did. The three people in the Libertarian Party decided that Iasov would run unopposed. That's right, there's only 3 people. It won't surprise you who they are. I've just listed them. If you're of the 390-odd other people in the party, you don't matter, you're a pawn. Many of you don't care. As far as Iasov is concerned, he's the party. What benefits him is what benefits the party. If it also benefits Claire or CRoy, he's perfectly happy to let it happen that way.

Certainly, the social aspect of the game is important. But it's important in Risk as well. There's sentimental reasons or personal reasons to attack a certain territory or person. But the fact that social interaction is important is hardly reflected in the game. If it was, we'd have inboxes that could be sorted efficiently and a chat option, and private sections of the forums. You'd be able to play the game well, within in the actual game.

This game has gotten slightly better since I started playing it. On the Admins' side, contracts are gone. That's good. Nothing like a rule book that has to constantly intervene. Also gone is the judiciary from the USA, which was a player-created idea. But the fact is that player-groups should be able to be organized from within the game, and not without.

I restarted here a few months ago. And it's painful to think it's been that long. I think how many hours I've wasted, and I think I have very little to show for it, except that some people like my paper. And even that took what? Say I produced 100 issues, so just as many hours writing those issues? That's over four days of writing. And writing something which mattered very little. I can only imagine how far I'd be along in a novel if I'd spent 4 days writing it.

There's few people I like in this game, so I'll just rag on those I know the best.

CRoy is a fool. Last night he came bragging to me about running Claire's presidential campaign and how Inwegen was a winner, despite being crushed in the election. CRoy's major policy objective over the last month was to reconcile Krems and Emerick. Also, I believe he's in love with Emerick.

Claire can join him in the fool category as well, because she's convinced she's not part of the "elite" even though she clearly is. Worst of all, she tells the Lib high command that once she's not part of it, she's bouncing out of the party. She's not even loyal to thing that most defines her in this game.

I'm sure I can find a defect with everyone's personality, and I'm sure that by now, you can all find many with mine. But there actually is one person I truly enjoy in this game.

Paul Proteus, because he's hilarious. Paul, to you, I hereby designate you as God-King of Fun, and pass on the Department. It's yours. If the org is eliminated and the paper is too, it still exists in you. Ignore Justin McCravok, never fill out any of his stupid forms, and do what you like. Don't listen to anyone.

No collection of fools are going to tell me what I can and can't do. So if you're sick of the Libertarian Party, sick of the fools who run it, sick of Google Docs, sick of parties that are meaningless, sick of the whole damn thing;

Vote for me on the 15th as Libertarian Party President.

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P.S. This has absolutely nothing to do with the game's economy, though it's funny that that coincided with my revelation.

That's my peace. Goodbye.